When we think of hunger, perhaps a similar image comes to mind as I’m seeing in Somalia these days. Drought, dead cattle and empty pans. A country on the brink of famine. I am writing from a village in the Burao region of Somaliland where, like the rest of the country, its residents look up to the sky every day hoping for rain that never comes. Every person we’ve spoken to tells us the same thing: “We’ve been like this for five straight seasons. Nothing, not a drop of water.”
The situation is repeated in this country, which already experienced critical situations in 1992, 2011 and 2017. However, internal conflicts, insecurity, the worst drought in the last 40 years, the macroeconomic crises resulting from the pandemic and the problems with importing grain from Ukraine have put the population in an unsustainable situation.
On a long journey through roads and trails to get here, we could see many dead animals, mainly camels, unable to feed their owners. As Sadia Allin, director of Plan International in Somalia, explains to me, “For a Somali herdsman, the loss of a camel is more than a drama, it is a loss of soul,” and more than half of the country’s population has lost three quarters part of his livestock.
But there is something invisible in this crisis. Rarely do we think of drought and hunger and understand that girls and young people are the first to suffer. In 2021, 126.3 million women were food insecure worldwide. The data cannot explain this reality.
Hunger has the face of a girl and a woman
The causes and consequences of food insecurity are closely linked to structural gender inequality, as highlighted in the new Plan International report “Beyond hunger, gender impacts of the food crisis”. In preparation, we interviewed 7,158 people in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Haiti, the countries with the most critical situation, and we were able to collect testimonies that tell us that hunger is far beyond the lack of food, especially for girls and teenagers.
During this trip I was able to see how gender, age or disability determine the survival strategies of families who have to make decisions in the face of a desperate situation that puts them at risk of gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual exploitation and school dropout.
Gender norms are sentences for girls and young people in a crisis situation. The one that makes you drop out of school because your education mattered less and less. The one who condemns your marriage while you are still a child. The one where you will have to take care of the tasks of collecting water, firewood or food, walking between 15 and 25 km a day, at night, alone or with others because you will feel more secure and exposed to all kinds of attacks.
Gender norms are sentences for girls and young people in a crisis situation
Across the eight countries analyzed, it becomes clear that discriminatory social norms also mean that girls and women tend to eat less than boys and men from the same household and often less nutritious food, with profound consequences for their health and development, leading to a vicious circle of food insecurity between the generations, causing 2.4 million newborn deaths each year.
In Ethiopia, child marriage rates have risen by 51% in the last year, and more and more young women are heads of families and are increasing their responsibilities at home, albeit not at the community level. In these countries, the majority of women are denied access to economic resources, land ownership and financial decisions. In fact, only 15% of landowners are women, even though they make up 43% of the agricultural workforce.
On the other hand, we have shown that school enrollment and school attendance – especially among girls and adolescents – decreases with increasing food insecurity. The loss of the school as a safe haven poses a greater challenge to the safety of both boys and girls. To encourage families to keep taking them to school, we have set up a school canteen program in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya or South Sudan so we can ensure these boys and girls get at least one meal a day.
Only 15% of landowners are women, even though they make up 43% of the agricultural workforce
Hunger has a solution, but it must be a solution that takes into account the possible unseen victims of this crisis. We can’t look away: Our report highlights the specific needs of girls, youth and young women who are most affected by food insecurity.
We call on governments and donors to urgently invest $22.2 billion (€20.44 billion) to avoid the risk of famine for 50 million people. It is also the funding needed to address this crisis in all its dimensions, enabling us to launch programs for child protection, against gender-based violence, for psychosocial support, health and sexual and reproductive rights, and for educational interventions, including school canteens, to develop .
Humanitarian organizations, which for months have been warning of the dimensions of this unprecedented crisis, are insisting to the international community on the need for immediate action. It’s time to act before it’s too late, while considering the impact that goes beyond hunger.
Shell Lopez She is General Director of Plan International Spain.
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